Bin Laden Told Kids: Move to US or Europe

Osama bin Laden advised his children against a life of terror, according to one of his brothers-in-law. "He told his own children and grandchildren, go to Europe and America and get a good education," says Zakara al-Sadah, whose sister was the al-Qaeda chief's fifth wife. For now, Sadah claims, Pakistani authorities are holding nine bin Laden children and three wives—including Sadah's sister—in an Islamabad security compound against their will, reports the Daily Mail via The Sunday Times.

The children refuse to eat and the wives have gone on a hunger strike, Sadah says. But Pakistan refuses to issue them passports, fearing they may be hiding information. "These children have seen their father killed and they need a caring environment, not a prison—whatever you think of their father and what he has done," says Sadah. "They have never had a normal life. They do not know what it is like to see the sun and to run around the garden. It breaks my heart to see them." (More Osama bin Laden stories.)